I Was Dora Suarez (14 page)

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘You suddenly decided to take up the piano?’

‘This morning I paid a man cash for a photograph and it isn’t here when he said it would be. I paid a ton for the fucking thing. It isn’t an old master; still, if it isn’t here in five minutes, I’ll tear the cunt’s head off for him.’

‘They ought to make you public-relations officer,’ I said. I added: ‘What made it so interesting that it was worth a ton of public money?’

‘It’s to do with a party Roatta threw at the Parallel for his birthday a month back,’ said Stevenson, ‘but why don’t you wait and see it, too? If it arrives.’

‘Yes, I will,’ I said. ‘Anything go on at the Parallel besides sing, strip and get pissed out of your brain on the ground floor?’

‘There’s an upstairs.’

‘What makes that exciting?’

‘Roatta was a blackmailer,’ said Stevenson, ‘and Robacci’s another. Only they weren’t into reputations – who gives a fuck about them these days? No, they were into a brand-new scam, only I haven’t been able to find out what it is, and that’s not for want of trying – nobody’s talking.’

A WPC came in with an A4-sized envelope. She handed it to Stevenson and said: ‘Sign.’

Stevenson said: ‘How did this arrive?’

‘Bike,’ she said, but Stevenson was slitting the envelope open. He slipped out a blown-up glossy photograph in black-and-white, that was all I could see, and bent over it. When he had finished, he spun the picture round so that it was right way up to me. ‘Just as a one-off,’ he said, ‘anybody in this elegant company ring a bell with you?’

I looked. In the photograph, among the tables, there was a girl singing, holding a microphone.

I said: ‘That’s Suarez.’

Stevenson said that he thought there was a far-out chance that it might be.

There were a great many other interesting features in the photograph, but in that second I only had time for hers.

I went into 205 for a minute and there was a letter on my desk, come by ordinary mail. I looked to see where it had been posted: Dulwich. It looked like a nasty letter, and I felt just by looking at it that the only prints on the envelope would be the postman’s. It lay in front of me in a Menzies envelope with dirt marks on it and the address was written with a ballpoint in sprawling block capitals. Even so, I rang down for a fingerprint man to come and take it all away – you never knew.

I opened the letter using a knife and a Kleenex. Inside was a sheet of paper with gold-scrolled edges. The letter, too, was all written in block caps. It read: ‘Hello cunt. The linen says your the bastard that’s put a reward out for a geezer that smashed a clock. I ever meet up with you you nosey git and you won’t need to know what the time is.’ I put my Westminster down and smelled the letter. It smelled faintly; the only smell I could associate with it was dirty clothes. I looked at the writing; the strokes were broken and cracked, as if they had been written on a rough surface. Then the fingerprint man arrived and took it expertly away.

I went back into Stevenson’s office. He said: ‘Anything interesting?’

I said: ‘No, just fan mail.’ Even though the letter was from the killer, it was of no immediate or direct use to me. Still, if the ad had helped upset his balance wheel, it hadn’t been wasted.

Stevenson said: ‘Why don’t you and I just have a look at this photograph again? The faces in the audience?’

I went round and looked at it over his shoulder. ‘Christ,’ I said,
‘you’ve got some familiar ones here – it’s like a villains’ “This Is Your Life.’ ”

‘It was happy hour, wasn’t it?’ Stevenson said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For some.’ I ignored the faked uproarious bonhomie of the faces at the tables with their cold eyes; I concentrated on only two. I looked long and hard at Suarez with the mike; her lips were parted much as I had found them. She was evidently singing, her eyes shut; nobody was paying any attention to her. Then I put my thumbnail down on a man with his back to the camera; he was going out under a lit sign that said
EXIT
. It was dark in that corner of the club and the camera must have caught him by accident. He was moving a little faster than the film, which blurred him, but he was black-haired, maybe in his thirties, on the short side, wearing baggy sports trousers and a dark shirt. I said: ‘Have you any idea who that is? That’s no waiter or barman, he looks sort of functional.’

Stevenson studied him and said: ‘Never seen him before, and the fact he’s the wrong way round doesn’t help. Maybe a bouncer.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘only bouncers at the Parallel like to dress up.’ I put the photograph down. I said: ‘Where did you get it?’

‘From a hostess who had her clothing set on fire by three punters because she wouldn’t cooperate the way they wanted her to,’ said Stevenson, ‘and I’m not joking.’

‘Civilised blot on the map, London is, isn’t it?’ I said. I added: ‘Well, I don’t know what you think, but I reckon your photograph makes this both our case.’

He said: ‘I thought you didn’t like working with other people.’

‘Depends who they are,’ I said, ‘and we’ll wipe the whole of this lot up much faster if we go about it two-handed.’

He said: ‘You fancy a trot round to the Parallel?’

‘Yes, I very much do,’ I said. ‘Right now, why not?’

‘Will we get a W?’ he said. ‘I think so, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes, most definitely,’ I said, ‘a warrant to go right through the pad from tit to arsehole, I think that might really come in most useful.’

‘I’ll just see to that while you comb your hair then,’ he said, ‘and we’re on our way.’

I said: ‘You may have problems getting it.’

‘I don’t think so really,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll be surprised. I think they’re beginning to have problems over Carstairs/Suarez up on the fourth floor. Big problems.’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘Word gets around, doesn’t it?’ said Stevenson.

‘Well, that’s exactly what words are for,’ I said. ‘It’s good, I like it.’

It was obvious when we got to the Parallel Club that Stevenson and I didn’t look at all the same as the other people who were going in and out, but we didn’t care – we weren’t going to hang about on the steps because of that. The boulder-sized doorman in a cherry-coloured overcoat, topper and buttons that could have done with a dash of Brasso moved over and said: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘In,’ I said. I showed him my warrant card and said: ‘We’re members of an affiliated club, see, so it would be a pity if you upset our night’s fun.’

The doorman didn’t quite know what to do about that, so he very sensibly did nothing, anyway for the time being, except go for a blower in the corner. Once well inside the gaff, the next person I caught sight of was the hats and coats girl. It didn’t take me long to work out that she knew, or anyway as deep inside herself as she knew how to go, that she wasn’t nearly as pretty as she thought she was, and spent as much of her free time as possible making sure everyone got a good hammering for it, especially men: between her thin lips there was about as much compassion as a cash-point machine gobbling up an expired credit card.

There was plenty of action in the bar, and some slow blue revolving on the lit-up plastic dance floor, too; but in general the bottles hurried about the place a good deal faster than the customers did. Another well-stuffed fun seeker who looked as if
he were quick on his feet if he had to be came over to us and said: ‘Who was it you said you were again?’

‘Correct the tone, son,’ said Stevenson. ‘You can see we’re police officers, so fuck off and wheel some brains on or I’ll have you on a one-way single.’ A passing punter who looked as if he had caught socialism in the bar and then brought it up in the scented jacks wavered past us on his way over to an Indian girl naked except for gold slippers and a fur coat, who obviously, from her choked expression, looked as if she felt she could have scored higher. The punter, who was young, with a very high, fairy-tale bald head, said to Stevenson: ‘Manners!’

Stevenson said: ‘I’m on my manor, it’s called the Factory. Are you on yours?’

‘My father owns half this street!’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ Stevenson said.

We were alone for a time in the cold pool of silence that coppers create round themselves. Looking through into the dance area further back, I watched a black girl moving among the tables with a microphone just as Suarez had done. I caught a couple of lines:
‘I’m eighteen years into my fever! I’m eighteen years into my mind!’

A tall young man who might have carried it off as a post graduate from a smart university if he hadn’t been so obviously knifed in the face came up and said: ‘Now, gentlemen, I’m the assistant manager, what is all this about? Can I help you? You can see you’re emptying the place.’

I noticed that people were in fact starting to leave with an unhurried, yet rippling urgency.

‘It’s obvious what it’s about,’ said Stevenson loudly. ‘It’s about a death, isn’t it?’

The undulations of the quitting punters imperceptibly speeded up.

I said: ‘Who’s in charge? Come on, darling, we haven’t got all night.’

‘Mr Robacci just happens to be in.’

‘Bring him,’ said Stevenson. ‘Now go on, go mad, do it now.’

‘Perhaps you’d care to come into the office.’

Stevenson said: ‘No. We’re staying here.’

I had been looking keenly at the post graduate for some time and said suddenly: ‘I’ve placed you now. You were busted as front man for a stolen car ring in ’85, drew three and did eighteen months at Ford Open. And then you did community work gardening in St James’s Park for kiting, didn’t you? You were lucky that time, weren’t you? Well, my life, so it’s old Arthur “Hullo All, I’m Dealing” Apsley-Kingsford all over again come back as a new person!’ I shook my head. ‘I hope for your sake you know nothing about this Roatta death, but I’m not fucking praying for you.’

The young man was sweating hard now and I said: ‘Go and get Robacci before I manacle you to the nearest radiator. Now move.’

Now it was the head doorman’s turn to see that the all-time dealer was getting out of his depth and that events were taking a wrong-o; besides, he was fed up at having been pushed onto the sidelines, so now he came back out onto the field to make his breath felt a bit. He said to Stevenson: ‘So you’re both out of the Factory, are you? What? Serious Crimes? I don’t make you, I don’t know you.’

‘No,’ said Stevenson, ‘We’re from A14.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I hope you never find out,’ said Stevenson. ‘It’s Unexplained Deaths, and I’ve got some very bad news for all of you – we have a warrant to search this premises till it’s stark bollock naked and that includes the whole building, not just the downstairs here, and what are you going to do about it?’

The doorman said: ‘I expect there’ll be a few phone calls, I don’t know.’

‘Forget it,’ said Stevenson. ‘People may or may not come round for an envelope on the fifteenth, but here we are on the twenty-eighth – we’re a completely different mob, see, and you’re all fucked sunny-side, sweetheart.’ He added: ‘So take good advice,
obliterate, stay quiet and wise, and who knows, you might wind up doing no more than a year hard. But start being clever and you can make that five, flower.’

The doorman started to say: ‘It’s not the night really for you to—’

‘No, I know,’ I said, ‘but you’re not paid to break a mainspring, you leave all that to us, we’re the specialists.’

‘That’s right,’ said Stevenson seriously, ‘you’d really be better off.’

‘Yes, but your improved circumstances don’t prevent you from answering a question or three,’ I said. I went right up close to him, pushed his topper gently back on his head and laid both my hands on his shoulders. ‘Now,’ I said quietly, staring into his bobbing eyes, ‘when did you last see a girl here called Dora Suarez?’

‘And don’t be pathetic and bleat who,’ said Stevenson. He handed me a copy of the photograph we had been looking at in 202. I took it and spread it under the doorman’s nose.

‘That girl,’ I said. ‘The girl there singing the night of Roatta’s birthday party.’ I added: ‘His last.’

‘She used to sing here.’

‘We know she did,’ I said patiently. ‘You’ve just seen photographic proof that we know it. But she won’t be singing here any more, will she?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Well, I’ve heard she’s dead,’ said the doorman.

‘You heard right,’ I said, ‘the same as everyone else in this country – and what do you think she died of?’

‘I read in the paper that she was killed by a man with an axe.’

‘True enough,’ I said, ‘as far as it goes, friend. But not quite far enough – she was one of those fortunately rare people who was killed twice over.’

(In my mind Dora was still writing at me from her exercise book: ‘If you want us to live we shall all live – and if not, not. But get justice for us, that had none.’)

‘I don’t understand,’ the doorman said. His thick boxer’s chin
was beginning to wobble, and I watched his eyes sliding around looking for help; he had had about enough.

‘The other way she was dying was from AIDS,’ I said, ‘and since you’re the strength here, what do you know about that? Could you have infected her? Are you seropositive, you fat git?’

‘Look, I’m just the doorman,’ he whispered.

‘Someone has to open the door and let the people into hell, don’t they?’ I said. ‘Do you do well on tips? From “my father owns half the street” and all that mob? And then do you take it out on the staff girlies, the bar-girls, singers and that on the side? A few hot, wet little fucks otherwise you could make things hard? I bet you just do,’ I said, ‘you’ve got just the face for it, you lovely big bouncer, you great bundle of what nobody ordered.’

‘I don’t know anything!’ he mumbled. ‘Nothing!’

‘We’ll find out what you know and what you don’t know,’ I said, ‘over at the Factory, leave it to us. Without us laying a finger on you, we’ll have you telling us things that you didn’t know yourself.’

‘Doorman?’ said Stevenson softly. ‘That’s just like really a very kind of temporary job; I think you’re going to find yourself very soon on a much longer-term contrast, satisfying work that could last for years, sweeping dust into a shovel with a handbrush every day along a very long gritty corridor made of cement. Lovely country air, too, not like these stuffy West End places. It’s in a town called Maidstone and it’s really really nice, do you a world of good.’ He felt the doorman’s gold-braided collar absently, picking a piece of fluff off it in a tender manner. Its wearer swallowed dryly.